I'd Rather Let The Flowers Keep Doing What They Do Best

Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome, Hyperkulturemia, or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly 'beautiful' or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world.
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As a writer on games, I've often expressed frustration at the way we often receive new material in a compartmentalized fashion, rather than discussing, reviewing, enjoying games as individual holistic experiences. I've long believed that, even if a game produces a laundry list of elements done outright wrong, that shouldn't preclude us from appreciating, even "championing" it for one very special element done absolutely right.

From my excess of patience with Persona 4's exposition or Hideo Kojima's self-indulgence to my outright frustration with audiences and reviewers who chose to focus on Silent Hill 5's combat when the critically-acclaimed series has never had good combat, it's perhaps a fair criticism that my eagerness for the "big picture" has sometimes meant I've missed it.

So why, then, am I plucking Flower's petals one by one?

Because inherent in every defense of a game's under-appreciated bits is a criticism of the culture that has failed to appreciate it. And inherent in this dissection of Flower -- which let me remind, I like -- is a criticism of a culture that has vastly exaggerated it.

We are a demanding audience because we want more from games. And when we find one we love, we reward it mightily, we ring its knell to the high hills, until GTA IV is Citizen Kane and we've all binged on the not-a-lie cake until we puke Portal. With BioShock, most of us had never read Ayn Rand before, but it was suddenly in vogue to pretend we had.

As if, by swelling with love, by being terribly sincere, we could somehow transmute the skeptics who think we're wasting time fiddling with controllers. As if by lionizing titles with the subtlest signs of promise, we could combat the mainstream's failure to appreciate the dignity of games. Perhaps we're addressing our own private, lingering doubts, sacrilege to confess. We must be the champions, after all.

We hold up Flower -- "look," we cry, "this game makes me want to have what is art discussions."

We play Flower and find that it is beautiful -- "oh," we sigh, "here's the one, here is our latest ambassador to legitimacy."

We find a cheeky business angle -- the $10 game that sold a $400 console! -- as if that were at all a normative example. We make it about the platform war, because this is deeply personal to us, the hardware market.

We are waiting, always waiting, for a game that can send us running to the blogosphere to discuss -- "here, here's one," we gasp, prizing Flower closely, thumbing through the indices of academia to find quotes about art, cracking our thesauruses for synonyms of narrative, homophones for wind.

Poor Flower, unpermitted to simply be a good, thoughtful video game. We did this to Braid, too.

And, fair play, Flower and Braid were done to us right back. Was it the creators of these games who began these vaunted discussions long before the games released, this authoritarian-author talk that let us know to plan ahead, look out, an Important Game is about to be born in a manger?

I don't know. But Flower has got people all twitterpated, as if one beautiful landscape has decimated the ability to reason. Your experience with a game is your own -- seeing what you want to see, getting out of it what you would like to get out of it, is your right. In fact, I'm the one who's always saying "engagement is a choice". Make that choice. All well.

But you will not create reality simply by the language you use to describe it. All your love will not imbue Flower with traits it doesn't possess. You're free to imagine that it is whatever kind of experience you want it to be -- but don't then try to rationalize it by hyperbole. Don't fake Stendhal's when what you've really got is Stockholm's.

Loving something based on what you need it to be to serve these fervent wishes for the advancement of the medium, this desire to elevate the discussion, gets in the way of the demand for genuine advancement, for real quality.

There's nothing wrong with a good, thoughtful, pretty video game. There's nothing wrong with a Pixar flick (credit to N'Gai for that one) -- but if we insist that all games must strive for more, we'll never achieve it if we act like we've just seen a Shakespeare, a Shepherd.

Not only that, but refusing to believe that Flower is not as "deep" as we need it to be devalues what Flower is.

It's a good, thoughtful, pretty video game.

It succeeds. I like it. I wouldn't bother devoting this much time to it if I didn't think it was important. It has contributed to the medium -- it's impossible that we won't continue to discuss it in the years to come, which is why I'm opposed to varnishing it with hype. I have expressed my admiration for the game in each post I've made about the it thus far, and so unwilling are some to smudge the new Da Vinci that I feel that no one's heard me.

By highlighting what Flower is not, I have not been trying to crush the flowers, to pull their petals. I only hoped to tilt this floaty breeze back down to earth. It's nice in the grass.


[Post headline is a quote from the poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa, as a little nod to a dear friend.]

Flower's Precious Play

Many of my colleagues have disputed me -- and fairly -- when I suggest that one of my aims in discussing games is to try to evaluate them according to what the developer's intention might have been and how well the game achieved it.

"You can't review a game based on intention," one of my cohorts told me.

Nonetheless, intention's something I always try to keep in mind when I critique games. Blame my theatrical background -- we were taught to read plays in part, at least, in the context of what the playwright is trying to say. The intention of a narrative often plays a role in how we think about the success or failure of novels, too. And, y'know, it might not be something that I can plug into the Metacritic scores I've assigned, but I like doing it anyway.

I have read interviews with thatgamecompany regarding Flower wherein co-creator Kellee Santiago says that the intention of Flower is to create "an emotion." I heard this objective most recently in a highly laudatory Slate article about the game; writer Chris Suellentrop says Flower made him feel "relaxed, peaceful and happy."

It made me feel that way, too, and judging by SVGL commenters' responses yesterday, most of you agree. In that respect, Flower can be said to succeed at its intention, yes?

Except that the deliberate intention of creating emotion is manipulative.

Again, I think of theatre. Picture an amateur actor, ready for her debut; backstage, she waits, considering her audience. "I'm going to make them cry," she whispers to herself. She sets a goal to transport the audience, to make them feel. But, continuing with the example, acting is about objectives. That's the most basic tenet of the craft.

An actor's meant to adopt and empathize with the objectives of the character he or she's portraying and believe in them fully. If the actor can't become immersed in that; if, while waiting in the wings, the actor is thinking about making the audience laugh or cry rather than considering what his character wants in a given scene; if they want to shortcut the work itself to get right to the reaction to the work, the performance is hollow.

The result is a preciously self-conscious play for attention on the part of the actor, not a genuinely meaningful immersive experience. I once wrote a column on how acting and game design don't seem to me to be very far apart -- and I still believe this is true.

So you see what I'm getting at, right?

Flower's a beautiful game. It transfers that sense of peace and beauty to the player. But it's about as sophisticated and sincere as a high school musical.

The game's transition from pure, humble nature through the frustrating barriers of technology's presence to its climax's glorious rendition of the balance between nature and man is lovely because of the way the design has meticulously engineered the emotional response; as one commenter said in yesterday's discussion, those frustrating gameplay sections that many dislike are necessary to make the final sections feel liberating.

But these are design principles, not transcendental philosophical threads, not transporting narrative elegance. The narrative of Flower is so insipid as to be unbelievable -- inside the dream of a flower -- the dream of a flower -- the power of nature beats up the bad oil well things, the sparkling magic of flowers brings man into balance with his environment, the end?

...You serious? This is your transformative experience? How come it didn't transform you when you saw it in an animated after-school special?

I wrote yesterday about how Flower's very game-like, very design-deliberate, and this is fine, even valuable. But a manipulative intention and a shallow "meaning," coupled with manufactured design? How is it that we can still claim Flower is about "art" or about "emotion", about naturalism or fluidity -- when it so obviously adheres to what has been done before, and in many cases, done to death?

This schism, to me, disrupts the "emotion," not enhances it.

Why is the audience being deceived by such an easy play for its emotions using such a trite, derivative theme? Because it wants to be, and because it believes it needs to be. We'll finish the discussion tomorrow.

Yes, I realize I said "tomorrow" yesterday and am now squeaking in half an hour before midnight my time. I'll try to be more timely tomorrow (hee hee)! In the meantime, I'd like to cap this off with a disclaimer: To make it precisely plain -- I like Flower. I am impressed with Flower. In fact, I'd say I love many things about Flower. Just remember, before you crucify me, that I am a fan.

You should raise a red flag, don't you think, if someone who likes a game is a "hater" for criticizing elements of it?

Flower's Lawful, Logical Wind

Thatgamecompany's Flower on PlayStation Network has received a great deal of critical acclaim already; I am quite sure I heard at least one pal from the critical press declare on Twitter that he "cried a little." Hefty evaluation for a title believed to be transcendent, positively -- but is it really?

It's received enough coverage by now that you doubtless know the basic mechanics. Using the tilt of the Sixaxis, you stir the petal of a flower on the breeze, and as you touch other opening blooms on your way, your single pale curl is joined by gradually more colorful petals, eventually assembling the sort of floral cloud seen in artful visions of springtime cherry blossom breezes.

Your wind can be a languid, atmospheric drift, or with the push of any one of the controller's buttons, you can direct it into a brisker, fresher and more focused breeze. And that's it, really; each level is a different windswept zone of nature, from a sunlit, grassy plain populated with nodding daffodils and brilliant red poppies through a rainswept rolling hill under a sky of ominous violet, as your floral journey brings you ever closer to a dark landscape dominated by the black skeletons of electric urbanization.

Certainly, Flower may be the first game that allows players to control wind in such a lifelike way. The Sixaxis controls are subtle and virtually impeccable, and some levels feature ambient breezes of their own that gives your personal current the lifelike sense of being part of the air, genuinely.

The player-controlled transitions from speed to stirring, from sky-height to a whisk along the fingertips of the grass are lifelike and lovely; the color palettes are nothing short of awe-inspiring, and the music responds subtly to the player's pacing. When touched, each color of flower emits its own musical note, like a glass bell or a tinkling chime, and these effects blend fluidly into the soundscape.

It's breathtaking and highly original, no doubt about it. If it sounds naturalistic, meditative, that's because it is. An anecdote told to me by a friend goes that creator Jenova Chen (also known for flOw, of course) was asked, "do you control the flower, or the wind?" And Chen is said to have replied, with either gravity or whimsy, "you decide."

Well, wait a second. Here's where we get ahead of ourselves.

Ironically, Flower owes its brilliance not to some fantasy that it's reinventing game mechanics, that it's creating absolute belief, that it's video game Zen, or that it's a "video game that's not a video game." In fact, its playability hinges squarely and mundanely on just how gamelike it is, how naked its design principles, and how ancient and obvious are the laws to which it adheres.

This Destructoid review is slightly harsh, perhaps; personally, I don't find the schism so overt as critic Topher Cantler did, but in the literal sense, it's on point.

The flowers of Flower grow in tidy lines designed to be navigated on the course of level completion. You must collect petals from their appointed groups in order to transform the area around you from listless to green before you can progress. The game is wont to send your breeze through branching tunnels with little blooms growing from the walls or from the logs that arch overhead -- in a fashion resembling nothing more than the ring-collecting halfpipe bonus levels in Sonic 2.

Flower is an imitation of the pollination process -- then why should being touched by a petal cause a flower to open, why should spreading the greenery bring a trio of windmills to life, thereby opening the next area? The game's undertones ask us to believe that our petal-strewn breeze is imbued with some kind of flower-power capable of revitalizing dead grass, punching through metal structures and turning on lights.

No matter how well it imitates the lawlessness of wind, Flower is no Zen. It does not create belief; instead, it asks us to suspend disbelief. It works not because it defies the traditional bounds of video games. It works because of how well it adheres to them.

It's artful, but calling it an "art game," an experiment, a transcendence, is a bit of a misnomer.

And in fact, that's absolutely fine. If I have a small issue with Flower, it's certainly not that it is, through and through, a video game. I love video games. And I also think I understand why everyone's nonetheless so positively transported; I have a theory on why my colleague had a little cry.

I'll explain tomorrow. Meanwhile, how have you responded to Flower, and why?

RapeLay: The Response

The New York City Council has discovered RapeLay. Although hentai games have existed in the underground of Western internet culture for several years, and have existed as their own market in Japan for far longer, it was inevitable that they'd one day come to the attention of the mainstream on our shores.

Of course, I'd hoped that our wider intro to this kind of material would be something of value, and not something like RapeLay, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, in the world of far more mainstream console titles, it's perhaps unfortunately Rockstar's shockers that brought to the attention of "everyday people" the mature potential of video games -- it's decidedly a shame that these are our watershed moments.

Nonetheless, I've decided to play the game, so you'll be hearing about it from me in some capacity in a few weeks or so. Can't tell you how much I enjoyed the contributions of the SVGL audience, and with that in mind, I decided to extract some of my favorite quotes and points of view from the community for consideration here.

These are the comments that stuck with me the most as I mulled my decision. Thanks, dudes.

Your Comments

"What if Lolita had been ignored because it involved a pedophile? Is Blue Velvet suddenly a bad film because it has rape? Even if the game handles the subject matter poorly, it should not be dismissed only because it is a game talking about rape." -L.B. Jeffries

"I'm just going to ask the obvious question here: what makes rape so much worse and so much less acceptable than all the other gleeful, murderous violence we act in games all the time?" -Kylie Primus

"Now this isn't to say mainstream culture doesn't "sex up" rape in many ways. [Law & Order: Special Victims Unit] is really good at shaming while titillating." -Robert

"Regardless of where you think the problem lies -the subject matter, the commenters or both- more talk is the only way to address it." -nescire

"After all, whether we're talking about an uninformed 'expert' on Fox News or legislators drafting a new bill to restrict game sales, the first point of defense in support of denigrated media is always: 'But you haven't even played this yourself!' -Jason T.

"People want to cry foul about this game, but you live in a world where it was created and is being sold, let's not be so shocked here. Why are videogames the medium that is too sacred for this kind of content? Does interactivity set it apart from snuff films so much?" -axion

"Individuals can decide where their own boundaries lie, but any expressive medium deserves to be unrestrained in scope. Terrible and ugly things are just as valid as anything else." -Mike

"Rationalizing discriminatory treatment of a product after the fact doesn't make it any less reprehensible. The bottom line is that creating a purely subjective 'hierarchy' of 'porn' is... well, either flawed or amusing." -Danakir

And On The Other Side...

Finally, from outside SVGL, the other side of the coin courtesy of Terrence at GameCouch -- check out his article in which he writes, among other things: "Defending RapeLay doesn’t defend Grand Theft Auto or similar games; it diminishes them"; "For people defending RapeLay, can you explain what it means when you rape a child?", and "We can defend our right to play violent video games without defending every form of electronic entertainment which comes across our table. Placing RapeLay under an 'it’s just a game' tent doesn’t help our cause."

I also rambled, in some state of fatigue, on the topic with Evan and Mike on the Yet Another Gaming Show podcast over at Fancy Pants Gangsters.

Incidentally, does anyone else think it's amusing that the City Council is responding to the game's existence by asking distributors to pull it? Um, just where do you think it's being "sold" here? Love how the Metro article immediately goes into GTA next, too. Sigh.

Okay. Let's take a break from that for a little bit and talk about nice things, like Flower and Noby Noby Boy, 'kay? Stay tuned.

Big Trouble For Dangerous High School Girls

Thanks to everyone who's been participating in the discussion about how we should handle RapeLay -- I hope you'll continue to share your thoughts, and I aim to assemble some of your comments for a final post where I discuss the decision I've come to as far as how to handle it or not.

It's an appropriate climate for another related issue. You may know I've long been a fan of Mousechief's Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, because of its innovative approach to conflict and the way it used the complex -- and yeah, often dangerous -- social environment and behavioral structures of teenage girls as simultaneously a game mechanic and a narrative. That narrative aims to be more mature and sophisticated than what's customarily seen in other casual games -- which is what DHSGiT is -- and my opinion is that it succeeds.

The game's been removed from portal Big Fish Games after some users complained of "inappropriate content," from what I can understand. DHSGiT contains a scripted event close to the game's climax where the player character shoots a boy who was about to rape her friend. There are no graphic depictions -- DHSGiT is effectively a casual card and board game with menus and narrative boxes, and so the questionable scene is nothing more than this:


The debate over whether Big Fish did the right thing -- similar to our RapeLay discussion, albeit on a scale much less stark -- is on at the site's forums. Kieron Gillen at Rock Paper Shotgun plucked some choice posts for a more cohesive summary, if you don't want to read the numerous pages of the thread.

Other complaints about the game apparently claim it "promotes bullying" (in fact it's about stopping bullies), and offended parties might have been struck by the game's title. I'd be lying if the slightly-salacious name wasn't why the title caught my attention in the first place, after all.

The official problem with the scene in the game, as I'm told, is the "implied violent rape of a woman in graphic detail." Keith Nemitz, the game's creator (also nominated for a WGA award for his work) , stresses that the throughline of the scene is that it's an interruption of a violent rape, and not the aftermath thereof -- and that therefore changing the word "dropped" above to "dropping" might alleviate the entire snafu.

I played a much earlier build of DHSGiT at the time I reviewed it for Wired last year, which means I never completed the full commercial release that contains this event, so I can't comment. I can safely say, though, that DHSGiT is a grown-up game, not in the slightest a shy title, and while it uses a delightful brand of black humor, I can't imagine it taking sincere situations lightly. And to pretend that violence toward young women doesn't happen in high schools and has no place in narrative -- especially those intended to be empowering -- is another sad example of audiences assuming games must always be shallow technicolor fantasies.

We're used to dealing with death in games. We are not at all used to dealing with sex. Rape, which lies in an uncomfortable gray area between sex and violence, is understandably even harder for us to get our heads around.

Part of my appreciation for the hentai game Kana: Little Sister comes from the equal hands it deals both sex and death themes simultaneously, and sex and death are common bedfellows in many eroge titles. As many people have mentioned in the RapeLay discussion, it seems that whether or not certain images and themes in games are valuable or distasteful depends on context.

Games often use graphic violence as a shortcut because it's easier -- and higher-stimulus -- than illustrating more complex conflicts. I think that the exploitation of boobalicious figures in video games is intended to be similar shorthand for the kind of complex sexuality that games have never quite managed to explore. The creators of games don't feel permitted to do any kind of complex exploration of these themes -- unless it's in porn games, from which nobody has any mainstream expectation (see why I like them so much?). That's why what we tend to get in commercial videogames is either all-out scandalous -- things like stripper minigames or extreme kills -- or unrealistically sexless, neutered.

I admired DHSGiT because of its willingness to explore an extra layer of depth in the emotionally-charged, often deeply dark interactions of young people (which is why I love Persona's subtext, too). As I said, I haven't played the scene in question, but knowing Keith's work, I feel fairly confident the context we're asking for was likely there. Anyone experience it for themselves that can vouch?

I asked Keith about how he felt about the game's removal. "I respect Big Fish's right to control what they distribute," he told me. "It is ironic when people bully a company into banning a game they claim promotes bullying (among other accusations). In fact, part of the game is about standing up to bullies. Maybe if they had played in their teen years, it might have taught them to play nicer."

Keith adds: "Mousechief supports DHSGiT as fine entertainment for TEEN audiences and older. It is not for children. We rate it TEEN on our website and informed Big Fish of the rating. We even changed the name and box cover (splash screen) at their request."

Much of our comments debate about RapeLay over the past few days has revolved around one question raised by many: If graphic, violent dismemberment is permitted and even celebrated in video games, then why is rape considered completely off-limits? Here, DHSGiT's audiences have primarily taken greater issue with even the implication of rape than they have with the shooting that followed -- illustrating that our question doesn't have an easy answer.

Also illustrated here is the danger of judging a game based on what you assume it contains and not what it does contain. Can you tell which way I'm leaning on whether or not to play RapeLay?

[UPDATE: I've heard from several DHSGiT players throughout today in email and conversations who didn't take issue with the content so much as with the fact that the "rape scene" represented what Kate in the below comments calls a "tonal shift" away from the rest of the game's throughline that seemed offensive or puzzling because it was so abrupt and misplaced relative to the rest of the game.]

"Citizen Killzone"

Many of you liked the brow-raising, "oh, Internet" complaint by PSXExtreme regarding Edge's Killzone 2 review. You may or may not know my Gamasutra colleague Chris Remo is one of the folks behind the popular Idle Thumbs podcast, and as the crew often does, they've come up with another hilarious song about the Issues Burning Up The Internet Today. Check out "Citizen Killzone," will you?

The lyrics are up on Simon Carless' GameSetWatch -- bonus!

Was RapeLay 'Asking For It'?

So I've just caught the tail end of the RapeLay drama at Amazon.com. You may already be familiar with my purely academic penchant for hentai games, even alarmingly-themed ones -- believe it or not, although I've heard quite a bit about RapeLay (it's been an internet phenom since long before this Amazon thinger), I couldn't quite bring myself to play it.

Though it's perfectly possible that it was just laziness and a too-broad slate on my part, I think that the reprehensible nature of the themes might have been a little bit much for even me, so I never brought myself to download it. Brother-sister relationships? I'm okay with that. Girls with animal traits? Sure; I get it. Banging through the entire family? Done that, bunch of times. Asphyxiation, drug abuse, snuff? Played it. Rape -- real rape, not glossy "salvation rape"? Couldn't quite.

My argument in favor of hentai games is that it allows games to do what games do best -- create an experimental space for fantasy, for self-exploration. Act in imaginary circumstances in order to learn more either about the self, or about a certain culture, or about others. I hate the "it's just a game" defense in general, but hentai games are such specific experiences that the idea that they are just games makes them interesting bubbles to think about.

No sane person would ever suggest that real-world incest is a beautiful thing, to say the least. Nonetheless, Kana: Little Sister to this day remains one of the more sophisticated, complex and emotionally-affecting games I've ever played, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that as an eroge title, it's allowed to "go there" in ways that mainstream, E-for-Everyone games certainly cannot.

H-games in general exist in a world of their own laws and conventions. Similar to the way Japanese anime asks you to suspend your disbelief and believe in certain repetitive social themes that don't exist in reality, Japanese erotic PC titles ask you to accept many similar non-realities -- for example, the idea that a series of wildly left-of-center sexual adventures are a necessary part of a boy's summer journey to manhood, support his confrontation of previous emotional limitations. Or the concept that intercourse with the story's female characters represents some kind of positively-inclined transformative experience for them, also a common theme.

But my gut reaction to hearing about the RapeLay situation suggests to me that there's got to be a line somewhere. I'm torn between playing the game to see if that helps me articulate what that line is -- or ignoring it altogether, on the opinion that it's destructive to give any sort of attention or legitimacy to games like this.

Is this a personal values question, or is there a right answer? What do you guys think? Should there be an Aberrant Gamer about RapeLay, or do we turn the other cheek? Please discuss in the comments; I've also added a sidebar poll so you can weigh in and see what other SVGLers think.

If you need a little more information, Something Awful did review and play RapeLay a couple years ago. I always considered my own writing on H-games to act as a counterpoint to Something Awful's reviews, since those reviews understandably focused on how bizarre and awful these games could be, and I wanted to look for the gems of merit. But in this case, we're obviously talking about a game whose awful-ness is, at least at face value, far less up for debate.

My Cat Is A Sega Fan

What was in the industry's drinking water yesterday? Square Enix bought Eidos, Midway filed for Chapter 11, Bandai Namco bought D3, and then the industry's (good!) monthly numbers came out. I'm so tired that I'm not even going to link all of those news stories. Just go to Gamasutra and look at the headlines.

It's a little weird that Tomb Raider will be a Square Enix property, isn't it?

As I've a full playing slate for the coming week, I should have plenty of substance to write about in the coming days aside from "I'm too tired to think straight." I've got Flower, F.E.A.R. 2, Onechanbara (both Wii and Xbox 360!) and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for Xbox 360.

I'm dubious about Flower, but only because I think half the reason I so mightily hate flOw is because people over-vaunted my expectations. So I'm firmly refusing to adopt any preconceptions. Here's a fun question: if you're a game reviewer and a game's being massively hyped, should you:

a. Enter a zen state in which you meditatively disregard the hype and judge the game on its own merits or b. Allow yourself to be swept along on the hype wave and share in the expectations -- so that your experience will be just like the average consumer's?

If you like to discuss questions like these, you will be happy that the latest Wall Of Text from Shawn Elliot's reviews symposium is now published. You really only need to read the parts I wrote, though.

...Yes, I'm joking.

I'm really looking forward to this Genesis collection, by the way. So is my cat Zelda, who has been cuddling it all day. It looks like I mis-named her; she's obviously a hardcore Sega fangirl. Go figure:
She's never been like this with any other game.

Je Regrette

You might recall it took me a while to pick which platform to buy Grand Theft Auto IV on. I discussed, mulled the various benefits of each, and then decided.

...What the hell have I done?

Seriously. I went to a Rockstar event last night and played the cool DLC and then had to embrace the sad fact that I'd have to buy the game all over again if I ever wanted to download it. At the time I bought the game, it's true I didn't think I cared about DLC. But now I'm having a hard time understanding where my head was at.

What were the benefits of getting it on PS3, again?

Of course, I might be bristly about this just on principle. I finished GTA IV shortly after it came out and I haven't really gone back to it, so it's not like I'll suffer enormously. The more salient conclusion here is how it's become harder and harder for me to muster up an argument that explains my longstanding appreciation for the PS3.

Coincidentally or not, just as I was writing this post, the following Onion video link popped up in my email. You know how I'm not real into passing along negativity and blah blah, and the humor's not even continuously applicable to Sony's video game console, but this was just a bit too funny (language not appropriate for office environment/children, use headphones).



It's the kind of thing that will probably put frothing Killzone 2 fans into a coma (oh my gosh, have you seen some of these Killzone 2 fans?)

Guess I'll go download Flower now. Sigh.

Deadly Creative Risks?

The economic situation has made the creative situation for games pretty volatile right now. On one hand, the large companies become very risk-averse, reducing investment in new IP, culling big budgets and sticking to sequels and licenses more closely. On the other hand, recessions tend to create opportunities for new studios to emerge (just check out what happened in Vancouver, for example).

The two biggest offenders as far as placing more budget behind new IP than those IP were capable of generating: Electronic Arts and THQ. While the two publishers have somewhat different situations -- THQ can be considered a great deal more dire, for one thing, while Electronic Arts is really only doing badly by its own metrics -- both of them have said they're going to be much more careful about their title lineup and about their costs.

But even though the recession can be good for the industry as far as letting publishers make more strategic acquisitions and helping build an environment where talent can strike out on its own a bit more, it's a really dangerous time to be innovative. I recently did a story about the idea that in the current climate, the road to profitability really may be more of the same, generally.

But hey! It's not all bleak. THQ's Rainbow Studios was able to get the publisher to greenlight an action adventure game all about gross bugs and stuff fighting each other -- and this is even though Rainbow has basically only made motorsport titles forever. Seeing that they could earn themselves the opportunity to break out of the racing licenses and make a game that aims to take "a National Geographic special and meld it with an action horror experience" is pretty heartening, all things considered.

I interviewed lead developer Jordan Itkowitz on Deadly Creatures, which I thought looked pretty cool when I saw it over the summer. The fun part is he says the idea to pitch the game came to him in a dream. Check out the interview, huh?

Wii Music, Coda

We've been talking about Wii Music lately, and the impression I get is that the audience has a harder time articulating why they don't like it than perhaps we'd all prefer.

The three most common criticisms I'm reading in the comments thread of the first post are these: Wii Music is not competitive compared to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It's not satisfying to play air instruments as opposed to lifelike peripherals. Finally, it's too childish.

So is it true that all of you only enjoy video games that score you and that have success or failure conditions? Are we saying that this is what we need to have fun? There are plenty of games that depend mechanically on a lack of rules, on experimentation and exploration, so why do they get a pass while Wii Music doesn't?

Second, regarding the peripherals, are we saying that we want simulation and not suggestion? We can play a first-person shooter on PC that uses a mouse instead of a light gun, but we can't play a music game that uses motion suggestion instead of plastic peripherals?

Third, it's childish. Yeah, it is. So is pretty much everything we've ever loved on a Nintendo console. Kirby? Mario? Yoshi? Pokemon? Mario Kart? Those aren't equally cutesy and diminutive?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending Wii Music. I'm completely not interested in it either -- but I can't really articulate a reason that feels truthful, that satisfies me. I get the impression a lot of you are in the same boat. I wanna figure it out, yanno? Oh, so please vote in the poll on the right.

I'm also not saying Iwata is necessarily correct in suggesting that we just don't get it -- or more precisely, that Nintendo's failed to adequately communicate it to us. But the response to Wii Music was more than simple disinterest, at least from the portion of the audience for which I write. It was like we were unsettled by it, like we were trying to will it out of existence.

Did we see Wii Music as a betrayal, the most stark example yet that Nintendo had ceased to be a brand we could relate to?

Singing A New Song

Comic Con is on here in New York, and while I am not quite interested enough to attend the whole shebang, I'll definitely be hitting it up this weekend at least casually. I'll be sure and let you know what catches my eye -- to me, half the fun is hanging out with my colleagues, since so rarely do we have big New York-based events.

Meanwhile, after Nintendo's financial results came out in Japan, the company provided a transcript of a Q & A with Iwata that yielded some really interesting stuff we covered over at Gamasutra.

One thing that genuinely distinguishes Nintendo is their willingness not only to take hugely divergent risks -- but to stick with them dutifully on faith that the investment will pay off. Iwata knows, however, that some Nintendo products (arguably, its most successful products, at least) don't make a lot of sense at first. They tend to require a head-tilt and a ratcheting-open of the mind, a certain patient mulling that we've learned to accord Nintendo whenever it does something weird.

And Iwata's been talking about how it's hard for a product to spread if it doesn't make a lot of sense to the first wave of people that try it. He let on just how much Nintendo relies on sentiment -- a sort of holistic cycle of positive feelings that originate from a small group of early adopters who instinctively "get it" and then spread the love.

Iwata doesn't understand why Wii Music has not caught on (though I think most publishers would be pretty happy with 2 million-some units sold, right?), and he wants to mull it over a little more closely. He talked about how Brain Age didn't really start to sell well until the second installment, and that further investment in Wii Music (a sequel?) is necessary to figure it out.

I talked this over with some of my colleagues and our general opinion seems to be that what hurt Nintendo on Wii Music is the fact that, rather than pioneering the genre, it was late to it, having been beaten by Rock Band, basically, for the music-focused, more collaborative and less competitive experience.

Iwata doesn't seem to blame the audience for Wii Music's shaky start; rather than suggesting that the lack of comprehension is a failing on our part, he seems to be saying Nintendo ought to evaluate why their Midas formula failed with this title.

Normally, I wouldn't even bother talking about Wii Music here, since I think it's made for the demographic that would not be reading this blog. But maybe I'm wrong -- what do you guys think? Where was the chink in Nintendo's formula that time?

Also worth reading: Iwata's thoughts on the Japan-U.S. cultural divide and the DS.

After Several Days Of Rain

[errand boy and spacy girl]

Finally finally, there is Persona 4-related stuff to share, even though I've fallen a little bit behind here at SVGL.

In my month-end feature at Kotaku, I tried to pin down one of my favorite things about the game -- how the experiences of the protagonist within the story closely mirror the interaction of the player with the game.

I also touched on the differences between P3 and P4, and why it seems like P3 was so much darker. Anyway, see what you think -- the entire topic was a bit harder to articulate than I thought it might be, but hopefully it comes across.

We also recently published an opinion column at Gamasutra written by freelancer Samantha Xu. She spoke to a lot of sources specifically to talk about Kanji Tatsumi's sexuality in the game, which is certainly interesting.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with all of her points -- my thought regarding the character's shadow selves is not that they are a literal expression of a factual inner self, but a depiction that illustrates how that person fears being perceived, generally.

I don't think it's possible to look at Yukiko's or Rise's shadow, for example, and embrace the idea that that's how they "want to be" or "secretly are" -- it seems instead a harsh and frightening way of exaggerating a certain core truth about themselves, or suggesting that that's how "viewers" are seeing their worst traits.

Though whether Kanji is afraid he'll look ridiculous if he accepts being gay, or is just afraid he'll be seen as gay because he likes soft things and is afraid of women, who knows. I like that the story doesn't definitively answer that question. I've heard a lot of people say it would have been "better" if they'd just made him definitively gay, but that sort of misses the point, I think, accords him more conclusive treatment than the other characters get.

In any event, both Samantha's Persona 4 article and mine are spoiler-free, so you have no excuses! Unless, of course, you're not interested in P4. That'd be a fine reason. That'd make you crazy, but hey, I don't judge. Not really.

Oh, and one more thing -- the verbose and hyper-enthusiastic Matthew Hawkins is having a Persona 4 art contest over at his blog. You can win the Social Link expansion set, if you weren't a weirdo who preordered it the day it became available like I was.